The Influence Of Focus Operators Only On Understanding Of Reduced Relative Clause Sentences

The relative clause sentence has a universal and implicational characteristic, so it has a specialstatus for understanding of human language ability and cognitive mechanisms. The reduced relative clausesentence often contains two temporary syntactic ambiguities: a reduced relative clause and an activesentence, so the psychologists prefer to research it.The focus operator only whether guide "short" reduced relative clause sentences initially parsedhas been the focus of controversy. The syntactic processing of reduced relative clauses sentences with focusoperators only whether were consistent with the garden path model or reference support model orconstraint-based model, which is another focus of our argument. In this study, we designed two eyemovement experiments to investigate these issues.In experiment1, we investigated the influence of focus operators only on syntactic processing of"short" reduced relative clause sentences. A2×2within-subject design was adopted, with determiner (the vs.only) and sentence structure (reduced relative clause sentences vs. unreduced relative clause sentences) asthe independent variables. The dependent measures were the first reading time, total reading time, firstfixation duration and re-reading time. The result shows: subjects initially syntactically misanalysed "short"reduced relative clause sentences with and without only, and the inclusion of a focus operator onlyfacilitated recovery procedures rather than guiding initial parsing.In experiment2, we investigated the influence of focus operators only on syntactic processing of"long" reduced relative clause sentences. A2×2within-subject design was also adopted, with determiner(the vs. only) and sentence structure (reduced relative clause sentences vs. unreduced relative clausesentences) as the independent variables. The dependent measures were also the first reading time, totalreading time, first fixation duration and re-reading time. The result shows: the focus operator onlyinfluenced initial syntactic processing of "long" reduced relative clause sentences.Results from two experiments show: focus operator only on syntactic processing of "short"reduced relative clause sentences is inconsistent with the reference support model; focus operator only onsyntactic processing of "long" reduced relative clause sentences is inconsistent with the garden path model; focus operator only on syntactic processing of "short" and "long" reduced relative clause sentences areconsistent with the constraint-based model. The constraint-based model approaches to parsing provide thisflexibility. Differences in the relative strength of constraints explained why only did not influence initialparsing decisions for "short" reduced relatives, but did for "long" counterparts.The result shows: the inclusion of a focus operator only facilitated recovery procedures ratherthan guiding initial parsing of "short" reduced relative clause sentences; the focus operator only influencedinitial syntactic processing of "long" reduced relative clause sentences; the focus operator only on syntacticprocessing of reduced relative clause sentences are consistent with the constraint-based model.